The present invention relates to carbonated beverage containers, and more particularly to an apparatus for cloising an open end of a mouth of a carbonated beverage container and for pressurizing the interior of the container with air.
A carbonated beverage typically occupies only a portin of the volume of a sealed container and tends to go "flat" due to the tendency of the carbonated gases to achieve equal pressure level to that of the air above the liquid within the container. The usual recapping of a once opened container and its subsequent storage further diminishes the carbonation in the beverage since as the liquid volume to air volume ratio decreases the carbonated gases within the beverage continuously escape into the air above the liquid in the container. As a result, subsequent pourings of the beverage from the container are noticeably flat.
Various types of devices have been proposed in an attempt to prevent the carbonated beverage from going flat or loosing its "fizz". Some of these devices include a piston reciprocating within a cylinder disposed within the container, as in U.S. Pat. No. 4,524,877, while others tend to employ bellows type pumping devices such as in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,033,091 and 4,640,426 or expandable bladders in the space above the carbonated beverage within the container as in U.S. Pat. No. 4,482,072.
It is also known to preserve wine by pressurizing the air above the wine in the a bottle with argon or carbon dioxide gas as in U.S. Pat. No. 4,477,477. Additionally, various devices are known for carbonating a beverage within a container as shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,082,123, 1,022,968 and 711,459. Finally, pumping devices such as that shown in U.S. Pat. No. 2,612,297 for dispensing ketchup and the like from bottles are also known.